I stand in slack-jawed awe. How long have you been doing this? How long did it take to get this good?

Thanks for those kind words. (The low resolution of computer screens hides the multitude of sins and makes me look good.)

I started cabinetmaking as a career about 1991. Before that it was a bit of a hobby...

I like. I like lots. Especially those bookshelves on the second page, very classy.

I am personally in favor of fixed shelves, incidentally, but then I have large numbers of books and can sort them by size. What I have noticed is a lack of good shelving for paperbacks— Borders has a good style, with exactly the right depth and an almost imperceptible tilt that increases stability and access.

My only critique on the site is the pictures on the front page; they appear uneven and random and, honestly, having a blurry picture on the front page is A Bad Idea™. Also, if this is a mercantile site, you might want to have something as simple as "Quotes available for work in the Bay Area; no shipping at this time."

So, for your next trick, do you do hidden doorways? Hiding a pantry or room with bookshelves is incredibly cool, and apparently not all that hard (if you place things correctly, of course.)

And how did you get into cabinetry? I'd like to be able to take a few classes (or equivalent) in the next few years. I never had shop class available to me and would like to rectify the situation. Besides, it's a shortcut to getting exactly what I want since nobody seems to sell it.

(P.S. Weird. I had to post "uneven" because your filter didn't like the synonym I used because of a biologists' term contained therein.)

The cabinetry looks great but the site needs work. Its design should express the sense of proportion and elegant finish of your best work. Which means, better layout and better pics.

Thumbs down on the blurry photo, though the idea is right. People want to see the craftsman at work. Also, if I lived in the Bay Area and needed a cabinet-maker, I'd like to see some close-ups of corners and joints.

Random Jottings is a well-designed, handsome site. Was it rough in the beginning, too?

I think you are right about the blurry photo. I'll move it to some obscure spot. I hardly have any photos of me, because I'm always the one taking pictures. And I think people do want to see the person they might be dealing with.

It's easy to say that a web site should be elegant, but damn hard to do, at least for me. Hopefully I will stumble on a just-right elegant site and do some copying...Or just keep tinkering.

Random Jottings was very homely at first. Embarassing to remember.

Durbn, I hope you do take some classes. It's a lot of fun.

Actually, if you have trouble coming up with clean and elegant site designs, I'd look in the web design section for negative-idea books, like the one on the top 50 typical design flaws, or Son of Webpages That Suck. They work a little better than most web design books because they point out why something looks bad.

The other trick, one I'm fond of, is designing "sliced" graphics in Photoshop and using the Save For Web function, which automatically sets up the table. So if, for instance, you want two or three pictures to be layered in a cool fashion but can't get it set up right, you can layer them in Photoshop, slice them up (which means that you can drop other photos in, as long as they're the same size), and have them come out on the page just right. This is particularly nice for banners; unfortunately, the pretty one I did up recently was on a site that has been discontinued, so I can't show you what I mean.

Yeah...

Okay. Going back to check the site, I have a lot of notes.

1. Do you know how to straighten photos in Photoshop? There's a trick called the Measure Tool, an alternate option on the eyedropper. You use that to draw a line along a straight edge, vertical preferred, and then go to Edit—>Rotate—>Arbitrary, and the value will be in there automatically. Straight photos look professional— the subject matter of yours is generally clear enough.

2. Some of them are also bowed (because of the lens), but flattening them is a little tricky to explain...

3. Don't apologize for anything on your site. When you comment on the Art Deco bookshelves, the "over-the-top" comment makes it sound like you hate them or are trying to be overly modest.

4...

Okay, I'm just getting overly picky here. But since I have a bro-in-law who works for Adobe, and I use Photoshop for art, I know all these little tricks to make photos look great. You have my email (watch the missing o!) so send me some of these pics (as big as you can, and no cropping) so I can show you what I'm talking about.

Thanks,
I will take you up on that offer shortly..